AN MP conducting an investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly last night claimed his computer files have been wiped.

Norman Baker, Lewes MP, said he has evidence to prove Dr Kelly did not die as a result of suicide. The Liberal Democrat said he had told police he believes computer files at his Lewes constituency office have been remotely wiped.

The MP told the BBC: “What my investigations to date have demonstrated is that there are significant medical doubts from professional medical people about the alleged cause of death.

“Indeed there are a number of specialist medical experts who tell me that it is clinically impossible for Dr David Kelly to have died the way that was described.

“I am suggesting the explanation for suicide simply doesn’t add up.”

Dr Kelly was the Ministry of Defence scientist whose conversations with a BBC journalist led to reports that the government “sexed up” the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. In July 2003 he was found dead with his wrists slashed.

4 thoughts on “The death of David Kelly is back in the news”

I have never believed Dr Kelly killed himself, although I know his family do not want the subject disturbed and I apologise for any distress the question causes.

Some things that don't stand up –

Those prominent blue tubes in your wrist are not arteries, they are just veins. It is very hard to bleed to death through a vein – you have to work on keeping the vein open. The Ancient Romans did it by sitting in a warm bath of water to prevent clotting. Wrist-slashing is the classic cry for help, and almost never fatal.

The paramedics who attended the scene both swore that there was not enough blood around for the wrist cuts to have killed him.

The autopsy failed to measure blood loss, amazingly.

He took either ten co-praxamol or paracetamol (I have seen both reported)at the scene of death – the packet was found by him. Ten of neither would kill you, and indeed if you did take enough paracetamol to kill you it is a horrible slow death. Dr Kelly was a chemical weapons expert and would have known neither would help kill him quickly. Given the timing and the fact he took the tablets at the scene, he couldn't have taken either in time for any pain-killing effect to kick-in. And neither is strong enough for serious pain anyway – which again Kelly would know.

He had recently joined the Bahai faith, and was very serious about it. Bahai is very strongly opposed to suicide – it is a basic tenet of the faith.

We should also remember that Kelly had told Gilligan the truth – there were no weapons of mass destruction.

There was considerably more than a therapeutic dose of co-proxamol in Dr Kelly's blood, but according to Richard Allan, the forensic toxicologist reporting to the Hutton Inquiry, nowhere near enough to kill him.

According to the actual blood tests Dr Allan declared the amount of co-proxamol in Dr Kelly's blood a quarter to a third of what is normally a fatal amount.

It has been largely assumed, that because 29 tablets of the painkiller co-proxamol were missing from the blister packets in Dr Kelly's pockets, that he took all 29.

It was known by those close to them he had a strong aversion to taking tablets, but even if that were so, he could not have ingested all 29 tablets, because he regurgitated a large part of his stomach contents. The forensic biologist reported a large amount of vomit on the ground and all that remained in his stomach was residue equivalent to a fifth of one tablet. So the amount ingested did not represent much of an overdose.

It is important to note that gauging how much of a particular drug a person ingested is not an exact science.

One of Milroy's colleagues at the University of Sheffield, forensic toxicologist Professor Robert Forrest, has helpfully pointed out that concentrations of a drug in the blood increase markedly over time – as much as tenfold.

Since Dr Allan did not analyse Dr Kelly's blood for well over 24 hours, the concentration of co-proxamol components may have increased up to tenfold.

So while Dr Allan judged the amount of co-proxamol in the blood to be only a third of what is normally a fatal amount, this could mean that the actual amount ingested by Dr Kelly 24 hours or so earlier, was far less than a third of a fatal amount – possibly as little as a thirtieth.

Four surgeons agree that it is virtually impossible to bleed to death from a single transected ulnar artery because in the open air, the artery immediately retracts and seals itself off.

The absence of blood reported by the paramedics bears witness to that. What disturbed them most was the strange distribution of the blood: unlike the hundreds of 'arterial bleeds' they'd attended they was no blood splattering at all on Dr Kelly's clothing.